The disclosure of Japanese Patent Application No. 2007-022990 filed on Feb. 1, 2007 including the specification, drawings and abstract is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
The present invention relates to a vehicle efficacious constituents supply apparatus for supplying efficacious constituents to an occupant of a vehicle.
There have been proposed supply apparatuses for supply aromatic constituents or moisture constituents from vents of an air conditioning system in order to maintain a good environment within a passenger compartment. Once aromatic constituents are supplied from the vents, however, the aromatic constituents so supplied eventually fill the passenger compartment, and hence, not only is a large amount of aromatic constituents necessary but also it has become difficult to provide environments according to tastes of occupants within the passenger compartment.
To cope with this, there have been proposed supply apparatuses in which curling rings of aromatic constituents or moisture contents are projected towards an occupant (refer to, for example, Patent Document Nos. 1 to 4). Since the apparatuses allow aromatic constituents or the like to be supplied locally, it becomes possible to provide environments which satisfy the tastes of the occupants within the passenger compartment by employing a small amount of aromatic constituents.
[Patent Document No. 1] JP-A-2006-280748
[Patent Document No. 2] JP-A-2006-282083
[Patent Document No. 3] JP-A-2006-282084
[Patent Document No. 4] JP-A-2006-282085
Incidentally, in the supply apparatus described in Patent Document No. 3, an organism sensor for detecting an organic signal such as the heart rate of an occupant is provided, and when the organism sensor detects that the occupant gets sleepy, aromatic constituents having an awakening effect are made to be supplied towards the occupant. Although the sleepiness arising in the occupant is eliminated to enhance the safety in driving by supplying the aromatic constituents having the awakening effect in this way, since there exists an occasion where in the event that the degree of awakening of the occupant is decreased remarkably, the degree of awakening of the occupant necessary for safety driving cannot be recovered only by the aromatic constituents, a further improvement is in demand which can promote the safety operation of the vehicle in driving.